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Marcos Pérez Jiménez, 87, Venezuela Ruler

Gen. Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who as the last military dictator of Venezuela led a government notorious for brutality and corruption, died early today in Madrid. He was 87.

In the decade when he dominated Venezuela, one of the world's largest producers of oil, General Pérez Jiménez was feared and hated inside his country and mocked elsewhere as the prototype of the Latin American military despot. His virulent anti-Communism and his tolerant attitude toward foreign oil companies, however, gained him the backing of the United States. In 1954, nearly four years before his fall from power in a coup and uprising, it even awarded him the Legion of Merit.

Mr. Pérez Jiménez was born in Tachira, a western border state. He was a 31-year-old army captain when he took part in a coup in 1945 that put the left-leaning Democratic Action Party in power. In November 1948, however, he and two other officers opposed to the accelerating changes installed themselves as the country's leaders, voided the Constitution and outlawed the governing party.

Little more than a year later, General Pérez Jiménez's main rival on the ruling junta was assassinated, paving the way for the ambitious young officer to become the strongman. He called an election in November 1952. But when the results appeared to be going against him, he simply halted the counting and declared himself president.

With his authority secure, General Pérez Jiménez forced many former associates into exile and tortured, murdered and incarcerated hundreds of other opponents. Many were sent to the Guasina Island prison in the Orinoco jungle. The national university was closed, independent labor unions were abolished, and the press was intimidated.

The main pillar of General Pérez Jiménez's rule was the much feared National Security police force. It was run by a cruel but loyal underling, Pedro Estrada, whom Hubert Herring in ''The History of Latin America From the Beginnings to the Present'' called ''as vicious a manhunter as Hitler ever employed.''

Government spending on education and health was slashed, and the earnings from oil sales were diverted into lavish, costly and often superfluous construction projects. General Pérez Jiménez presided over the opening of a highway between Caracas and the Caribbean coast, the building of a copy of Rockefeller Center and a luxury mountaintop hotel that overlooks Caracas and what was said to be the world's most expensive officers' club. His cronies pocketed much of the remaining government budget.

Suspicious of outsiders, the dictator also concentrated power in the hands of six army colonels from his home state.

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Fearing a repetition of his electoral embarrassment in 1952, General Pérez Jiménez ordered that an election scheduled late in 1957 be replaced by a simple plebiscite on his administration. Barely two hours after the polls had closed, the triumphant results were announced: 85 percent supposedly favored his remaining in office for another five years.

The triumphalism and favoritism toward army cronies irritated the air force and navy. On Jan. 1, 1958, air force officers tried to lead an attempted coup. Although that uprising failed, it provoked a popular rebellion, a general strike and a navy revolt that succeeded in toppling General Pérez Jiménez on Jan. 23.

An estimated 300 people died and more than 1,000 were wounded. But crowds danced in the streets of Caracas at the word of the general's downfall. Venezuelans who resented Washington's backing of the ousted ruler gathered in anti-American demonstrations and later, when Vice President Richard M. Nixon visited Caracas in 1958, his motorcade was stoned.

General Pérez Jiménez fled initially to the Dominican Republic, governed by his friend and fellow dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. But after his protector there was assassinated and the country gradually slid into turmoil, General Pérez Jiménez, fearing that he would be killed or extradited back to Venezuela, moved to Spain, where he lived comfortably on the $250 million he is estimated to have siphoned from the state treasury.

Although the general was long despised in Venezuela, murder charges against him were lifted in 1999. He lived long enough to see his image somewhat rehabilitated, thanks to President Hugo Chávez, a former army colonel and a bitter foe of the two-party democratic government that succeeded the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship.

The general's daughter said his body would be cremated on Friday in Madrid but expressed a hope to return his remains to Venezuela ''someday.''

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A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on September 22, 2001, on Page A00012 of the National edition with the headline: Marcos Pérez Jiménez, 87, Venezuela Ruler. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe